Oliver Starkey

He [La Valette] was the dread of Asia and Libya and once the guardian of Europe, after he had subdued the Turks by means of his Sacred Arms, the first one to lie buried in the grave, here in this propitious city of Valletta which he founded, worthy of eternal honour.

[3] Oliver Starkey's' parentage is set out in the depositions of witnesses in a chancery case begun by him in 1546, soon after his father's death.

Although there are other possibilities the strongest evidence is that he was the illegitimate son of Hugh Starkey of the township of Oulton Lowe in the ancient Cheshire parish of Over and that he was born in the 1520s.

[10] Valette died in 1568 and ten years later his remains were moved to a tomb in the crypt of the newly completed co-cathedral of St John.

[11] In 1569 he was appointed Bailiff of Eagle, the fourth highest dignity in the English Langue and in 1578 he was made Grand Prior of the Order of St. John in England.